


Slipping Off Course

by misszeldasayre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 21:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misszeldasayre/pseuds/misszeldasayre
Summary: Between the birth and death of every star stretches a wide expanse of space, a thirsty maw that drinks up all the light it sees and spits back darkness. In the bowels of a star destroyer deep in that darkness, they find each other—the Supreme Leader’s apprentice and a fledgling pilot recruit who outflies and outwits him at every opportunity. Though he fights the pull of the Force, Kylo Ren finds himself reaching for Rey with nothing to stop his fall.





	1. Chapter 1

_Between the birth and death of every star stretches a wide expanse of space, a thirsty maw that drinks up all the light it sees and spits back darkness. The sole break in the emptiness comes from the celestial bodies clustering to dance well-worn paths around the star. Some of those rocks attract other rocks, and then they form proper families, an invisible template replicated across the galaxy: sun, planet, moon. Light bringer, drinker, reflector._

_Birthed among the Core Worlds, the planet Alderaan absorbs its sun’s warmth and basks in its moon’s luminescence. It generates no light of its own, merely facilitating the connection between the sun and moon. Separated by space and time, the sun and moon dart among the stars in a frenzied grab for a sense of completion they never quite find outside the other’s light._

* * *

Legend has it that the Imperial Navy’s flight school was so rigorous that it boasted a ninety percent rate of failure among its trainees. Only the best candidates were admitted, yet even they could not always measure up to the task of serving their Emperor honorably. There was no room for error in the service of so great a cause. Thirty years later, the First Order struggles to keep its small flight school afloat in the bowels of the destroyer _Finalizer_.

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” Commander Torin Bastra likes to grumble, at least every time Kylo Ren deigns to train with his students. As Kylo paces behind the TIE pilot hopefuls, he imagines Commander Bastra’s balding head flushing purple, his eyes bulging as his windpipe constricts. Tempting, partially just to shut him up. Underneath the seasoned pilot’s prattle, Kylo detects the insinuation that not just the quality of students has declined, but also the quality of leadership. The comparison grates, worms under his mask and tugs at his throat.

However, killing Bastra would displease Snoke since the flight school barely cranks out enough pilots to meet the First Order’s needs as is. So Kylo grits his teeth and tunes out the chatter when he comes to supervise the school. To keep his reflexes honed knife-sharp, he joins in on a training exercise or two when the itch for victory creeps into his cloak. Bantha fodder, the whole lot of students. Without Kylo’s command of the Force, they’re all useless at the controls compared to him.

All besides one pilot.

He sees the fighter long before he sees its pilot, a hunk of garbage he’s sure should be scrapped before it implodes across the sky. Except there it is, gaining on the tail of his TIE Silencer. The other pilots have long since fallen behind, their ships specks among the stars. It’s a standard course, a race around the neighboring Atterra system. First one to land back at the _Finalizer_ wins. It’s no real competition, yet Kylo enjoys humiliating Commander Bastra by virtue of beating his protégés.

The scuffed-up fighter, an old model from history holograms about the late Galactic Empire’s fleet, lurches forward in Kylo’s wake. Suddenly he finds himself punching the accelerator, an edge of doubt slinking into his assured first place finish.

Shoulder blades digging into the seat, Kylo’s thrown back as his TIE bolts onward. When the TIE in his wake swerves below his field of vision, Kylo imagines the pilot has rightly assumed defeat or perhaps has a healthy sense of self-preservation. Even with the Force as his guide, Kylo would exercise caution if flying that rust bucket.

So he’s shocked to find the old fighter cutting into view in front of him. A growl of frustration escapes him; he will not suffer defeat at the hands of a simple student. Creeping into a higher gear, Kylo pulls his Silencer ahead of the old model—slowly, achingly—nearly scraping wings as he passes it. As the _Finalizer_ looms beyond him, Kylo makes no effort to slow.

His Silencer skids into the launch bay, grinding sparks against the metal floor. Clean landing be damned, he still won. Nonetheless he’s curious—which one of these pathetic students could perform like that? He unclips from his seat and stalks out of the cockpit into the belly of the bay. The rival ship shudders as its door rolls back to release a slight pilot wearing the standard black flight school jumpsuit. First the pilot clambers out of the cockpit to the ground, then briskly weaves between machinery until they rejoin their instructor, all the while ignoring Kylo who follows on their heels.

“She had you running there,” Commander Bastra chuckles as Kylo approaches him. When Kylo swivels his head to face the instructor, Bastra falls silent. Though Kylo’s mask renders his expression unreadable, the man must recognize the irritation radiating off of his superior. Satisfied that Bastra has finished yammering, Kylo turns to examine his competition.

With practiced ease, the pilot removes their scuffed helmet, chin jutting defiantly, to reveal a scrawny girl, hair pulled into three neat buns. Her mouth stays flat and she makes no move to speak. A few freckles stand out on her nose, which Kylo lingers on a moment too long. Unremarkable, except for her pilotage. Had Kylo not raced her back to the destroyer a few minutes ago, he would never have picked her out of the handful of recruits.

Metal scrapes on metal as the other TIE fighters begin peeling into the launch bay. A quick glance at the pilots scrambling like ants from the hulls and Kylo turns back to the challenger before him. “Who are you?” he asks.

“Rey.” She doesn’t raise her head to meet his eyes, although she doesn’t look down, either. She keeps her gaze locked straight ahead.

“She wasn’t here last time,” Kylo says to Bastra when the girl offers no more information.

“No, my lord,” he confirms. “She recently completed a basic training program.”

Having recently examined several new groups of recruits to formulate his reports to Snoke, Kylo shakes his head. “Surely I would have seen her among our new recruits.”

“No, my lord,” Bastra says. “We funnel our most promising candidates through a newly-developed program for the accelerated.”

Frowning, Kylo turns to the girl. “How long have you trained on the Finalizer?”

“Two months.”

“Obscene. TIE pilots require at least six months of—”

“Begging pardon, my lord,” Bastra interrupts, “but the First Order is burning through pilots faster than we can train them. Years ago, the Imperial Navy pushed their most promising candidates to enter flight school as early as possible.”

A student with an ego like Bastra’s would preen at this praise, yet the girl—Rey—stands motionless. Kylo can’t tear his eyes from her until the other students fall in line with her. When she turns to follow her peers back to their training quarters, Kylo catches another glimpse of her eyes. They’re plain enough, brown, yet he can’t help but see roiling waves crashing against rocky shorelines in their depths.

* * *

 The next time Kylo Ren visits the flight school, he’s prepared for a challenge. Sure enough, he notices the girl slide into a newer TIE Superiority model, her former model reassigned to a boy who gulps audibly as he approaches it.

In flight, Kylo doesn’t hold back, but the girl steers her fighter so deftly that he’s forced to draw on the Force more than ever. These practice routes are routine; he could fly them without external guidance, but now he needs to distinguish the figure jostling for the lead his side. This advantage allows him to anticipate in advance her next moves, and determine instinctually the shortest path back to the _Finalizer_.

Probing, he finds her: a steady heartbeat. Her Force signature leaves a sweet malla petal trace in his mouth. He senses her grabbing for the throttle… Then she grasps it and—he feels _it_ —feels the way she reaches for his Force signature—and he recoils from her grasp.

She’s searching for him—not just searching. She can sense him, too. On some deep molecular level, in his gut, Kylo Ren knows that she’s drawing on the Force to trace him. Alone in the cockpit of his fighter, a prickling sensation of nakedness floods him. Fleetingly, he stands bare before her understanding. Then he reacts, his pilot’s instincts throwing up mental shields and retreating to the corners of the galaxy as his ship stutters to a crawl.

Now he’s fighting for control, for the lead, as that girl pulls ahead for a good chunk of the course. Only towards the end do the thrusters on Kylo’s Silencer kick into gear and haul his sorry ass to victory. The chase ends with him stomping out of his parked starfighter as he barricades his brain against the girl. She can’t break inside, but outside his defenses, she lurks.

The very idea that someone can challenge him using the Force after his years of study unsettles him. He stands, fist clenched, while Commander Bastra debriefs the students upon their return to base. Sweat breaks on his temples as he fights the compulsion to flee from the bay and gather all the information he can on this girl. Yet his illusion of unflappable dominance must be maintained. Leaving now might hint at weakness. So he stares down the pilots, thoughts lightyears away.

Distantly, he hears Bastra exclaim, “Rey has a quarter of your training and still manages to beat you all! Back to the simulations for you.”

Still, the girl doesn’t smile at the praise. Kylo watches her trail behind her classmates as they disappear from the launch bay. That night he dreams of an ocean like the ones on Chandrila, and a pair of brown eyes guiding him to shore.

* * *

  _Distance is no matter for darkness, but for the stars lining the sky, it remains insurmountable. A bitter lesson that lingers long after it has been taught, the distance taunts the Alderaanian moon. It knows the source of its light and longs for that which it cannot have. When the silver knife of longing glints sharp against its throat, the moon turns to the sun, seeking alignment._

_Slowly the moon begins to cover the sun, first the corner and then the center, and onto the far rim. Turning steadily, it begins to shave away at the gap between them. The sun does not move. But it does not protest, either. It glimmers behind the encroaching moon, a stab of indifference or perhaps the flash of a familiar grin between long-lost souls._

* * *

 The idea that a nobody behind the controls of a borrowed TIE might eclipse him consumes Kylo Ren. That the scruffy pilot with a blank face almost broke into his mind—the mind of a Knight of Ren—drives Kylo to personally inquire into Rey’s background. The file that the flight school managerial subordinates produce only generates more questions.

Human female, recruited from the Niima Outpost of Jakku two and a half months ago by a routine stormtrooper patrol, no family to speak of. Unusually adept, she was fast-tracked during basic training, and shipped off to flight school a few weeks ago.

No matter that the file contains no useful information. Kylo will figure out Rey’s secrets, one way or another. Instead of taking his meal in his private chambers, Kylo ventures to the mess hall for dinner. When he enters, the room freezes. “My lord,” the nearest officer says with a bow. Kylo strides past him, hands clenched. So much for subtlety. Scanning the hall, he can’t pick out the flight school students among the hordes of troopers and officers. So he grabs a tray of grey mush and walks row by row through the cafeteria until he finds the students.

Settling at a table across from the pilots, he makes no effort to eat the mush heaped on his plate (gods know what food that pile of goop is trying to impersonate). He makes no conversation with the troopers surrounding him, who nervously scoot their helmets away from their leader’s tray. When they realize they aren’t the object of Kylo’s attention, they resume their conversation, hushed and tentative. Kylo tunes it out, focusing on the black jumpsuit one table down.

Rey eats quickly, shoveling the food into her mouth as if she fears it may disappear before she can finish it. She sits shoulder to shoulder with two of her peers, although as their meal progresses, Kylo observes that she doesn’t talk to either of them. The other pilots chatter with their comrades at the table; Rey takes no part in these interactions. After scraping her bowl clean, she extracts herself from the cramped bench and adds her tray the growing stack at the end of the table.

Kylo stands, observing her escape through the nearest door, and follows her path, leaving his tray and a cluster of startled troopers behind. A wave of release washes over him as he leaves the noisy dining hall behind. The hall is blessedly silent, except for the click of boots ahead of him. Catching up with Rey poses no problem for Kylo, but the look she shoots him when he grabs her arm hints of dangerous accidents and sore jaws.

It’s the sort of look Kylo has practiced many times, not one he’s used to receiving. Her boldness surprises him, but he can’t be put off by it. “How do you do it?” he prods, low and calm.

“Do what?” No my lords, no bows, just a direct, clipped reply. Her accent smacks of sand and a planet far from here, but Kylo can’t quite place it.

“Fly like you do.”

She shrugs. “Same as you.” A pointed glare at his gloved hand gripping her bicep, and he lets go, flexing his hands as they clench into fists.

“You almost beat me. No one flies like I do.”

She cocks her head. “You asking me for a lesson?”

Her squared shoulders, her set jaw—Kylo feels the familiar rage bubbling up his throat. “You’d do well to remember your place.”

“Excuse me, my lord” — the deferential words drip with an unexpected acidity— “but I have patrol duty tonight. I’m wanted in the launch bay.” She inclines her head and spins on her heel, leaving Kylo simmering in the hall as a wave of troopers march from the dining hall and into Rey’s wake.

* * *

 He avoids returning to the flight school until he can bear the anticipation no longer. Most of the trainees have suited up for their assignment and wait for Bastra’s signal in their ships by the time Kylo enters the launch bay. “Hold your students,” he tells Bastra. “I’m flying today.”

The commander bows. “My lord, we are not racing today. My students have a mission—”

“That I will join them on.” As Kylo waits for more details, the commander shifts.

“They plan to intercept and destroy a scouting party of Resistance frigates in the Ilum system, my lord,” Bastra says finally, smoothing the hem of his officer’s tunic. “My sources have tracked their scouts there on a number of occasions. It should be a simple training exercise, but my students must test their prowess in battle sometime.” His eyelid twitches. “The exercise is too simple for you, my lord. Perhaps your energy might be better expended else—”

Kylo closes his fist. The commander starts sputtering for breath. “I will join your students, and I will take down every one of those scout ships myself if your pilots aren’t competent enough to stop me.”

The commander gasps as Kylo releases the pressure on his throat. That look—terror, relief, resentment—quiets the fire raging inside him. “Y-yes, my lord,” Bastra wheezes. Kylo spots Rey, but she won’t meet his eyes as she crawls into the belly of her starfighter parked next to his.

Bastra leads the TIE squadron formation, setting a pace too slow for Kylo’s liking. When they finally arrive at the edge of the Ilum system, his fingers itch to compete. Against his better judgment, he probes the fringes of the fleet for Rey. He picks out her patient heartbeat among the patter of green students hovering over the precipice of their first firefight. He picks up her steady anticipation—suppressed excitement—a knifepoint of hunger. She’s several ships away from Kylo; still she stretches open before his fingertips.

And then his head becomes cloudy, crowded. Someone’s poking around, muddying his thoughts. _Rey_ . He not so much hears her as feels her, a guarded _Who’s there?_ thick with confusion and a pinch of frustration. She probes the most intimate parts of his mind for a millisecond prior to withdrawing, but he discerns her shudder as he yells.

Maker, Kylo hasn’t shaken like this since he stepped into the pilot’s chair of the Millennium Falcon for the first time, his father conspiratorially whispering, “Don’t tell your mother” with a wink. Yet here he is, trembling like a Padawan.

Just then, Bastra’s command crackles over the radio: “All TIEs report in.” A rapid roll call, and then he’s calling, “Forward” as the Resistance scouting party ships wink into view.

Laser bolts twinkle like constellations as the firefight breaks out, red and green streaks flying past Kylo’s viewport. He finds himself locked in a chase with an antiquated X-Wing—the stuff of his uncle’s stupid stories. It swerves right, then right again, determined to shake him from its tail. He can’t get a clear shot off, missing the ship by scarcely a breath. _Kriff_ , he thinks and he perceives Rey sighing in response.

And then she’s there—in his mind, in his viewport. One bolt, then two, and the X-wing explodes in a flurry of metal shrieking across the sky. How she knows what he needs, Kylo doesn’t understand. But now Rey’s ship flies at his side, the two of them blasting any Resistance vehicle that hurtles across their path.

A solitary enemy fighter remains, it seems, Rey’s TIE bearing down on it when Kylo spots another battered hunk of junk rattling towards her. No time to warn her of the impending crossfire. He fires on the ship sneaking up on Rey while she obliterates the one in front of her: twin burst of flames.

“Hold tight!” Bastra calls, and then, “Lightspeed!” One by one, the TIE fighters flicker from reassuring solidity to fleeting echoes, and Kylo’s left hurtling through the wide blue tunnel, Rey rattling around his brain.

She doesn’t think the words _thank you_ , but a flood of gratitude that isn’t his own washes over him. His fingers, sweaty under his gloves, slip on the controls of his ship as his confusion meets hers. Previously when he’s probed others’ intellects with the Force, he’s never felt their emotions—their thoughts—as if they were his own. Using the Force to mold minds, there is no give and take. Here there is both him and Rey, side by side. Balanced. The concept shakes him to the core. By the time he pushes her out of his head, sweat drips from his forehead, clinging to his robes.

After his ship is docked and the flight students have been dismissed from the launch bay, a hand catches Kylo Ren by the arm as he strides down the hall to his chambers. He spins on his heels to find Rey asking him a thousand silent questions in the space of a frown. Tucked under her arm, her black pilot’s helmet reflects Kylo Ren’s mask back to him. Underneath the shield that is his armor, he can’t help but feel seen.

“What was that?” she whispers urgently. “What was that?” Her arms move to grab him afresh—shake him—and Kylo does nothing to stop her.

“I don’t know.”

Desperation burns in her cheeks. “You’re the Master of the Knights of Ren. You study the Force.”

He grits his teeth, torn between curiosity and frustration. “I’ve never experienced this until now.”

She eyes him suspiciously, then nods, satisfied that he isn’t lying. “Force help us all,” she whispers before he brushes past her searching gaze.

* * *

 When her cough interrupts the stillness of his room, he scrabbles for his helmet, but it’s too late. Rey’s eyes rove across his face, lingering on his pursed lips, his rumpled hair, his narrowed eyes. “You don’t need to hide under a mask,” she says, a small smile taking them both by surprise.

Kylo doesn’t know what to say to this girl facing him, or why she’s intruding on his privacy. Nostrils flaring, he stares at her until he forms a coherent thought: _What are you doing here?_

Faster than he can speak it into existence, she replies, also a thought: _If I knew, I wouldn’t be here._

He detects her prickling, closing off, and her form begins to shudder until it fades, leaving Kylo facing a brushed metal wall where a shimmer of his reflection wavers back at him, a mockery. A shout rising up his throat, he swings his fist at the wall, calming only once the new dent grows warm against his knuckles.

* * *

 They meld again, this time as they’re racing nose to nose across the wide expanse of space. An unspoken challenge throbs at the edges of his consciousness, and then he sees her coiled tightly in her pilot’s seat even while he maintains control of his craft in his own thick leather chair. Rey doesn’t blink when he scowls in her direction; she doesn’t take her eyes from some fixed point in the distance over Kylo’s shoulder.

“Leave me alone,” she says, a clipped command that brooks no further distractions. In his periphery, Kylo catches her ship slinking across his viewport.

“Get out of my way,” he growls and the way her whole body stiffens is unmistakable, the way her brain nudges his out as her fingers deftly prompt her ship forward.

“I’ll be out of your way soon.” Then she pulls away and Kylo’s left chasing two hexagonal wings streaking out of sight.

 


	2. Chapter Two

Kylo Ren has peered into the minds of creatures across the galaxy, but never have the creatures peered back. The morning after he loses to Rey, he wakes with a sore jaw and aching teeth. He’s rattled. He wonders if she’s rattled, too.

He thinks of her as he swings his lightsaber in practice combat, as he reviews a new squadron of troopers, as he snipes at General Hux on the command bridge. During his communications with Snoke, his meditations, his saber forms—he can’t shake the sensation that there is more to Rey than he’s encountered, that she’s waiting for him just out of his reach.

They connect at random, no rhyme or reason—exciting and unsettling Kylo in equal parts, much to his chagrin. He’d never admit it, but he catches himself anticipating, almost longing for, another stolen conversation.

So he’s not surprised, despite the early hour, when he finds himself standing across from her in his bedroom long before the other flight school recruits rise. “You’re awake.”

She nods, folding her arms under his scrutiny. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.” He doesn’t tell her why he can’t fall back to sleep after dreaming of her flushed cheeks and tentative, lightning-fast reflexes, of her slender fingers and surprising height. He hopes she does not probe further, does not find his

At first she won’t look at him directly, eyes darting from the fringes of his figure to the floor and back once more. Kylo nearly finds her discomfort comical, but he shrugs on a crumpled tunic forgotten at the foot of his bed. As the fabric settles around his waist, he feels her whole being unclench and some of the tension brewing between them eases.

She’s shrouded in a standard issue tunic, no coordinating pants underneath, and he catches his gaze roving over the hem of her shirt—

“You can’t stay away,” she says, a hint of a exasperation in her tone.

Kylo snaps his head up to stare at the ceiling. “If only I could.” She doesn’t respond. Acutely aware of the silence, Kylo folds his arms only to note that he’s imitating her stance. He finds his hands contracting into fists.

“We race again today.” He finds comfort in her challenge that breaks the hush, familiarity in this unexplored territory.

“I’ll win again today,” he says decisively, relishing how Rey balks at his assurance.

“I’ve been practicing,” she admits.

He steps closer to her, but she does not back down. “That does not seem fair.”

A small smile darts into view. “The better to serve the First Order.” Her teeth glow luminescent in the red emergency lighting in Kylo’s room.

Curious, Kylo squints at her in the muted emergency lights lining his floor. “Why did you join?”

“Food. A bed.” She shrugs. “A way off Jakku.”

“The Niima Outpost,” he nods, remembering the sparse file he had poured over days prior. He had hoped to unravel Rey by reading its contents, but instead found a mystery—a nobody with a dusty past.

When he names her old home, she tenses, shoulders contracting and mouth tightening until it looks to Kylo like she’s pulling in on herself, disappearing into nothing. But this quiet is so different from their races, their squabbling, that he finds himself reaching for her hunched body, silently begging her to stay.

“Chandrila,” he says. She looks up, head cocked, arms still folded. “I grew up on Chandrila,” he adds because he doesn’t know what else to say to ease her sudden self-consciousness. Or perhaps he does, because the unease that cloaked her seconds ago evaporates with each word he speaks, clouds burning off the sea.

“Me, my mother and my” —here he can’t hold back the bite in his tone— “my father.”

Rey starts, yet her eyes burn questions into his narration. “Your parents, where are they?”

He’s all too aware of the way his shoulders jump into a shrug that’s more of a shield. He tries to relax his lips after they pinch together; one glance at Rey and he can tell his discomfort hasn’t been overlooked. “It doesn’t matter.”

Incredulity blooms into disbelief as Rey watches him feign relaxation. “You don’t know where your family is?”

“They… they’re relics of the past. They don’t understand the need for a new order to regulate the galaxy.”

“Do you miss them?”

He rarely allows himself to think of them like that, soft enough to miss. So often his parents are hard, unyielding, inflexible in his memory. Brittle, like his uncle Luke. When he pictures them, he sees fire gobbling up fields of grain, twin suns weeping a planet dry before the rains of change bring life again to the husks of a once-thriving people.

But there’s a foreign longing in Rey’s voice that Kylo’s heard whenever his mother talked about missing Luke, and later when he caught her sleeping alone, the garage empty and his father’s ship nowhere in sight. Rey might be asking Kylo about his parents, but he identifies that buried under her question is a hungry, biting loss that she’ll never admit and that he’ll pretend not to notice.

“No,” he says finally, for what does he know of missing parents he’d rather pretend he never had? He catches Rey’s curiosity dampening, her chest deflating. She’s fading in front of his eyes anew and he doesn’t understand what to say to make things better. Instinctually he reaches for her hand, clutching, squeezing. Her eyes go wide. Briefly he wishes he was locked in a pen with a rancor—anywhere but here—but then Rey squeezes back and his chest tightens, and then he’s grasping at nothing but air.

* * *

 “You cheated!” he hisses, inches apart from her helmet. He feels wild rage and an unnameable shame pulling at his mouth, his cheeks, but all that he sees in the reflection of Rey’s helmet is his own black mask.  She ignores his proximity, removing her helmet and smoothing her hair, tied back today in a small ponytail that Kylo can’t help but notice.

“I won,” she says, moving to duck around him.

He pins her against the TIE, his arm flat across her chest. “Because you cheated.”

“I can’t account for what flashes across your mind during our competition.”  _Our._ The idea of the flight school’s training exercise belonging to the two of them does  _things_ to Kylo’s stomach, but he presses on.

“That wasn’t my thought and you know it.” Yet he can’t deny that the vision had stopped him in his tracks: the two of them, tangled in his sheets, her hair splayed across his pillow and her voice moaning his name…

He would be lying to himself if he claimed it wasn’t a welcome image.

But for her to spring it on him during a race, of all times. For a second, he had forgotten that he was behind the controls of his Silencer, and that second was all she had needed to take the lead and land in the  _Finalizer_ ’s bay while he struggled to regroup his thoughts.

“If that’s the single way you can win, then it doesn’t count.” Petulant, he recognizes, but he’ll try anything to make her smug smirk disappear. All it does is broaden her glee.

“Says the man who lost.” Ducking under his arm, she adds, “You may want to strengthen your mental defenses. Never know when someone might infiltrate them.”

* * *

 Tonight Kylo can’t wait for the connection to activate, so he seeks out Rey among the flight school students as they stream from the dining hall. Her quick smile upon seeing him poke above the crowd makes his stomach twist. He follows her to a private alcove, waiting until the corridor clears, replaying that kriffing smile he’s sure will haunt him for the rest of the evening.

Familiar uncertainty clamps his jaw shut. Rey sees him hesitate as he removes his mask and jumps in before he has a chance to flounder.

“Kylo,” she says, his name smoothing to gold on her tongue. “We’re preparing to strike the Resistance soon. Slowest pilot owes the winner a drink?” Her grin positively devilish, she beams up at him until the pause extends for a fraction too long.

“That’s why I came to speak with you.” He catches himself fiddling with his gloves. “Our connection—”

A blast door shuttering in the line of fire, her face grows cold. “What about it?”

“You sense it. Surely you must.” She doesn’t budge, but she doesn’t leave either. He forges on. “Our power.”

A small shudder at the word and then she stills. “Don’t say it like that. Ours.”

It’s precisely the word that fills Kylo with an unshakeable assurance, so unlike the power he’s wielded formerly, that it must be them. Without her, his potential to tap the Force is fleeting, his future mercurial. With her, he could conquer the galaxy.

“We’re the two best pilots aboard the  _Finalizer_ … kriff, the two best pilots this side of the galaxy in decades.” An urge sweeps over Kylo Ren to grasp Rey by the shoulders and hold her—shake her—until she agrees. Blood trickles from his lip along his tongue where his teeth have wandered, and he allows impatiently. “With a connection like” —  _ours_ , he almost says— “the one we share, think of what you and I could do to our enemies.”

“No ship would be able to outrun us,” she admits.

“We could hunt down the Resistance, outfly their allies and outpace their scouts. Together we could restore order to the galaxy.” He’s reaching for her but her hands brush back the tendrils sticking to her cheeks. “Alone, you are powerful, as am I. Together…”

Her mouth works silently before she cuts him off: “We’d be unstoppable.”

“For the good of First Order,” he adds because for a moment her words leap to life in his mind, a new emperor at the helm of the universe and his empress shimmering at his side.

She nods, and Kylo remembers why they’re here. “For the First Order.”

Only then does Rey reach for his hands, coiled tightly against his thighs. Slowly, maddeningly, she removes his gloves one finger at a time, her glacial pace a contradiction of his urgency. Once his hands are bared, she strokes her warm palm along his until she meets his fingers. Then they’re twined together, first their hands and then their minds, and between them a stuttering longing springs into orbit.

* * *

  _Ravenous for light it cannot hold, the moon consumes the sun. Barely a diamond-sharp corona remains, the faintest slivers of light piercing the moon’s reign, a twinkling promise of the light to come. To those on the surface below, the moon has all but devoured its partner. To those in the sky, the two bodies are straining for each other, set ablaze by desire._

_Even as they align, forces beyond their power stretch them apart. But here, in this furtive stolen space, the moon can gaze upon the sun without fear of burning up in her glory. Here the tendrils of the sun can caress the moon’s mottled surface in the dark. Together, the sun shines just for the moon. Together, they leave Alderaan cold and the galaxy black._

* * *

 It’s just Kylo, Rey, and Bastra, seated at a long metal table in the flight school quarters. The commander’s presence grates on Kylo; he finds himself resenting Bastra for interrupting time that could be spent alone with Rey. Instead of squeezing the man’s trachea shut, Kylo grips the helmet he holds in his lap like a life raft.

“The newest TIE fighter, designed for our Special Forces, seats two.” Bastra’s implication settles thick like a blanket around his guests.

Kylo glances at Rey, whose face remains frozen. “I fly alone,” he says, yet Bastra shows no surprise at the pushback.

“The SF TIE features more powerful cannons and shields than our other models. With one of you piloting, the other can focus solely on destroying our enemies.”

“I’d pilot,” Kylo interjects, a childlike sullenness creeping into his tone.

“With you piloting,” Bastra amends, “Rey can shoot down every ship in the Outer Rim.”

Kylo turns to Rey, expecting her to protest. However, she nods, a thin smile peeking through her clouded face. “As you command.”

* * *

 Tonight, Kylo dreams of storm battering oceans, of falling overboard a boat and tangling in a riptide that won’t relinquish him no matter how hard he struggles. Limbs reduced to wintenberry jelly, he stops fighting the waves, lets them wash him under the water—and then a hand grips his, pulling him from the sea that threatens to swallow him whole.

He jolts awake to find Rey’s hand in his. He jerks from her grasp, flinging himself upright. She stands over his bed, eyeing his bare chest and flushed cheeks with an inscrutable expression that Kylo’s scared to identify.

“You were screaming when you called to me,” she explains, nodding towards his hand. “I couldn’t wake you up until I…”

“Thank you.” The words stick to his tongue, rusty. She smiles at them anyway.

“Sometimes I dream like that, too,” she offers. In the glow of the red emergency lights, an unexpected softness sandpapers away her edges. Her hair brushes her shoulders, tousled and sandy.

He examines her silhouette by the light of the stars streaming through his window. “Who are you?”

“I don’t know.” A hiccup of sadness, and then it passes, but she doesn’t move from her position by his side. “Go back to sleep. We’ve got a mission in the morning.”

He means to say  _Get out of my head,_ or  _I can’t fall back asleep_ , but what slips out is, “Morning and night look the same from space.”

Rey settles onto the floor next to his bed, crossing her legs and pushing back a yawn that tries to snatch her words. “Can I—?”

He doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no either. Instead, he shrugs off his quilt, crawls out of bed, and joins her on the floor. There they wait until the morning alarm blares and she flickers out from under his arm.

* * *

 Thick leather and durasteel between their backs, yet Kylo feels like he could reach out across the TIE and find himself palm to palm with Rey. Crammed in the belly of this compact hull, their minds slipping into newly-worn grooves, a closeness wends between the cracks in his brittle pride and the chinks in her battered armor. Try though he may, Kylo can’t discern where his thoughts end and where hers begin.

He’s dressed crown to toe in pilot’s garb, but he’s never felt so exposed. She’s watching him—he’s sure of it—as he noses the fighter forward, tilting the wings, hurtling their ship out of the destroyer’s bay and into the dark. He senses, rather than sees, her fingers tapping absently on the triggers of the guns. She nudges him— _lightspeed now_ , seconds earlier than he’s planned to make the jump—and rather than fight her, his hands respond to her commands faster than he anticipates his own movement.

Careening through the blue tunnel of hyperspace in a fighter built for two, an impulse overtakes him: to steer this ship off course, to fly far away from the Resistance and the First Order, to uncover a little pocket of the galaxy untouched by conflict. To settle on an island surrounded by gentle aqua seas and bask in Rey’s light until they’re too old to fly. But his hands won’t move for him the way they will for Rey, so the TIE beelines through hyperspace and drops into the Ileenium system before Kylo has time to abandon course.

“There,” Rey whispers across his headset or maybe their bond. Beyond them unfolds a squadron of ships trundling towards the surface of D’Qar. The entirety of the Resistance's meager supply line. Bantha fodder, the lot of them, with no guns to stave off a surprise attack. Little good their antiquated cloaking devices will do when they fall under Rey and Kylo’s fire. Shoot them down, and the Resistance’s resources will dwindle until the First Order can stomp them out with no more effort than it takes Kylo to polish his boots.

However, reluctance catches between each joint as Kylo propels the fighter forward; his own or Rey’s, he can’t tell. The ships spreading across the viewport set his nerves on edge. “Force, is that a medical transport?” she whispers and the accusation rattles around the cockpit. “They’re defenseless, the whole bunch.”

They can’t do this, not here. Their task is clear, and the two of them cannot fail. “We serve the First Order,” he says. “Their enemies are ours. Sometimes we must do what is requested of us.”

Reluctance solidifies to resolve. “For the Supreme Leader,” she says with a swallow, locking the guns in the position.

“For the Supreme Leader,” Kylo repeats.  _For us_ , he thinks, savoring the way she doesn’t balk at their unification in his words.

The first green bolt careens through space, a greeting that sends the first frigate into a tailspin. Another shot and another—Kylo admires Rey’s speed and precision as the cruiser ahead explodes into an orange flare. A few moments later, and the second of the three frigates joins the first, now a whirlwind of debris scattered outside Kylo’s viewport.

He steers their TIE into range to give Rey a closer shot so she can finish off the remaining vessels, but instead of sensing her satisfaction, he’s met with fear that’s not his own. Squinting at the final frigate, he watches it swings to port, baring a laser cannon streaking red.

“Fall back!” Rey cries. So the ships do have functional guns. No matter; a few well-timed blasts from their fighter and the battle will be over before it begins.

Victory dies on Kylo’s lips as the frigate opens its hull and four X-wings, battered but serviceable, surge forward, wings unfolding. Suddenly he’s perched on the edge of the captain’s chair, thrusting their craft into a dive to narrowly avoid a laser stream.

“T-85s,” Rey mutters. “Deflector shields and laser cannons. Fast, but…”

“We’ve got the fastest pilot around.”

Her frustration wells up in both of them. “Fast isn’t good enough. We have to get close enough to hit them. Hard.”

Kylo nods; she can’t see it, but surely she can sense it. He feels her fingers wrap around the triggers as his own tighten around the steering mechanism. And they’re off, one unit with one purpose: to strike down the X-wings bearing down on them.

A barrel roll and a tight swerve, and Rey shoots down the nearest X-wing in a spray of fury and fire. “Left!” she calls, and before the command leaves her mouth, Kylo steers the ship away from the oncoming assault. As their TIE darts and weaves between the rebel fighters, the final frigate crawls away from the battle, an unmoored aiwha bobbing to the safety of the base on D’Qar below.

Its attempt to escape does not go unnoticed; urgency fuels each adjustment of its wing and blast of its cannons. A spectacular shot by Rey sends the second X-wing spiraling into the third. Only one remains doggedly on the TIE fighter’s tail, pelting its shields with angry red bolts.

Panels flash yellow and sirens sound loud in their ears. “Our shields can’t hold much longer,” Kylo hollers, but Rey already understands—better than him—that the time to end this conflict has arrived. “Turn this ship around.”

“What?” It’s suicide, peeling away from the X-wing just to face it head on. Yet Rey’s tone demands compliance. Trust.

“Turn this ship around.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Though his instincts protest, Kylo Ren steers the TIE fighter in a precipitous drop, lunging around to face the X-wing as quickly as the nav system lets him. The missile lock warning sensor screeches; Rey grunts as she takes aim.

So close he can spot the astromech droid chittering on the body of the incoming fighter, Kylo waits until the X-wing erupts into a conflagration before yanking their ship into a climb so steep his shoulders ache as they dig into the seat.

“The frigate,” he reminds Rey, leveling the TIE out and chasing down the swollen beast of a ship. Rapidly they approach firing range, their quarry feebly struggling to outrun the First Order’s best.

“Now you will end this,” Kylo says.

“I’m not ending anything,” Rey retorts. “We are.”

In that instant, he becomes her and she becomes him. Together they turn the ship; together they fire. Not apprentice and master, or student and commander, but partners.

It’s really something, the explosion that ensues. Almost like watching the sun set over an ocean, all futile oranges and resigned reds. Once it ebbs, they sit in silence. Relief bubbles between them, and a keen sort of regret. The Force engulfing them quivers with the aftershocks of loss.

“There goes the Resistance’s supplies.”

“And their reinforcements.”

They hover like that, watching the blaze snuff out until there’s nothing but a sea of junk left bobbing in their wake.

Exhaustion seeps into Kylo’s every pore as he jumps to lightspeed. It is finished, and the sole thing propelling him on is the force between him and Rey. Her fatigue laps against his soul, waves upon pebbled shores, but from her he borrows a razor-thin strength forged from years alone in a desert wasteland.

Blue hyperspace gives way to the looming hull of a star destroyer: home. In the hull of the Finalizer, Commander Bastra congratulates them, all hearty pride and unctuous praise. Kylo resents him and every officer clustering around the TIE fighter as he and Rey disembark. Now they are no longer one; now he must share her and for that, he grows stiff. All eyes on them, he longs for dark shadows and a private room, or for his helmet that he left behind in his room.

 


	3. Chapter Three

_To the inhabitants of the planets circling this union, the sky appears to darken as the moon pulls closer to the sun. The air grows cold. For one ravenous protracted instant, the sun’s corona wraps around the moon, a fiery embrace. To the onlookers below, the sun and the moon become one._

* * *

 The TIE fighter docked and their flight gear hung up, Kylo Ren and Rey step from the familiarity of the launch bay and into the winding halls of the  _Finalizer_. Here their paths should diverge, but Kylo finds himself lingering without much to say, the impending distance oppressive after such intimacy.

“Goodnight, I guess,” Rey yawns, reluctance burned into her brow.

He doesn’t know how to say it—that he doesn’t want this to end—so he reaches for her hand—warm beneath its glove—and guides her to his room. The blast door whistles closed behind them, and then it’s just the two of them, no controls or guns to hide behind. Their hands disconnect reflexively, and silence overtakes them again.

They stand apart; Kylo’s limp hands find new purpose in removing his gloves and boots. Rey follows suit, pulling her hair from its tight ponytail, and then they’re watching, waiting. She slumps at the foot of his bed, letting the metal frame prop her upright while her eyes droop.

Gently, he wraps both arms around her swaying form, hoisting her from the floor into his feather-soft bed. After covering Rey with a blanket, as Kylo moves to take her position on the floor, he’s met with a small tug on the wrist and a mumbled “please.”

Protests die in his throat as her mind calls to him. He slips onto the mattress next to her, over the covers, ramrod straight touching the wall, until her breathing slows and oblivion comes to claim him, too.

* * *

 His dreams have not prepared him for this: how Rey wraps herself around his torso, how her hair smells like salt and how she mutters each time she stirs. He tries to pull away but she’s pinned him down and he’s not sure his will is strong enough to break her grip. So he allows himself to lean into the embrace and wonders how his body can handle such closeness without imploding.

Rey wakes with a gasp on her lips and wild confusion in her eyes, softening only once she realizes where she is. “You’re really here,” she murmurs.

Is that satisfaction or regret? “Yes,” Kylo says. In reply, she burrows into him.

“Is it morning?”

The reading on his holochron indicates that the rest of the  _Finalizer_ is still sound asleep. “No,” he says, greedy for a few more hours like this. “Rest.”

In the liminal space between sleeping and waking, Kylo senses the boundaries that separate him and Rey slipping from their grasps. Perhaps there will be more evenings like this to follow, more firefights and victories and the melding of two into one.

“Did she tell you stories before bed?” Rey whispers, rolling to face him. “Your mother?”

Sleep darts beyond his grasp at the question. It feels like urging a freighter forward only to find its core has run dry of coaxium. Kylo’s wrenched from a future unfolding with Rey by his side and hurled into a past from which he’s been flying fast and far. Tamping down the impulse to dodge the question, he steadies himself, a hand on the swell of her hip.

“Yes.” In the faint gleam of the red emergency lights lining his berth, Rey’s eyes flicker as she tastes his reticence.

“Tell me a story.”

He pauses so long that Rey thumps him a few times. “Don’t fall back asleep,” she says, a sliver of a smile illuminating the room.

Just then, he remembers a tale he hasn’t heard since he was a young boy picking up his uncle’s lightsaber for the first time. “My mother grew up on Alderaan—”

A keen inhale from Rey. “The ruined planet?”

“Before it was destroyed” — _Obliterated_ , Leia had said once when he asked her about her home, a slight waver belying how she missed it so— “Alderaan orbited a star, and a rock orbited Alderaan.”

“A sun and a moon.”

He nods. “One day, as my mother played outside” —with the children of visiting diplomats— “with her father’s guests, she looked up to find a bite taken out of the sun.”

Rey wrinkles her nose. “The Death Star?” Kylo thinks of another eclipse, a battle station materializing into orbit seconds ahead of disintegrating the entire system.

“The moon. Growing bigger and bigger by the minute, its black silhouette encroached on the sun, reducing it to a fragment that cast dusky shadows from every surface. My mother says the air grew cold as the sun slowly disappeared.”

“The sun never disappeared on Jakku,” she says, disappointment masking a grin as she nestles closer.

“Mother said it was like… watching the sun and the moon dance. The whole planet stopped to watch. People streamed from their houses into the streets to see the sun touch the moon.”

“Like this?” Her palm scorches his cheek. They’re flush now, Kylo and Rey, noses but a breath apart, and Kylo doesn’t know whether to freeze or continue talking. Instead of a moon enveloping a sun, he sees Rey’s throat bob nervously as he waits. So he leaves behind the story to bask in her light.

He closes his eyes the first time he kisses her, but his eyelids glow gold as if he’s staring into the sun with just a whisper between him and the brightness of its rays. When he peeks through his lids, the only light he sees comes from the places their skin meets. She’s shaking, or perhaps the whole destroyer is wobbling because he’s trembling, too.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers into her neck, for himself or her, he’s not sure. “I feel it, too.” Coals stirred awake after decades of sleep flare into an inferno that sweeps over Kylo’s bed, consuming all but the connection sparking between them.

* * *

 In the skies and between the sheets, Rey pushes her partner, soaring to new heights. Over and over his name slides over her tongue: “Kylo, Kylo.” He’s not sure if she notices the way she clings to the syllables that make up the mask he donned when he was forced to swing a saber against his uncle in self-defense. Flushed and fever-warm, Rey ignites a longing—a sense of belonging—that he hasn’t felt for ages.

The thought strikes before he can submerge it—a flash of a former self and then it’s gone. Not swift enough to evade her, though. The name surfaces from his memory and he knows she heard. Ice coursing through his veins, he freezes.

Brightening imperceptibly, she tries the relic from the past out for herself: “Ben,” and suddenly Kylo’s lost in the way she makes it new. He leans down again and soon she can’t say much at all.

* * *

 They’re drifting off to sleep once more when Rey rolls into him, nuzzling under his arm with a dogged insistence that tugs a smile from his lips. “How does your mother’s story end?” she whispers.

“Her story?” he repeats, brow wrinkling as he stifles a yawn.

“About the sun and the moon. Did she see them meet?”

He fumbles through the dusty crevices of his brain, through stacks of cobwebbed recollections. Rey’s right next to him, probing for the answer, and all he can think about is how right it feels that she’s beside him. How wrong her absence would be.

“Briefly.” Eyes closed, he’s almost wrapped up in his mother’s quilt, nestled on his father’s side of the bed, empty another evening. He loses himself in the details, rattling them off coldly to stave off the ache of his lost family and an inquisitive girl. “The moon couldn’t eclipse the sun for long. The shadow it cast shrank as it continued its orbit. Alderaan was only without light for a few short minutes.”

“But the sun disappeared?”

“To the people below, yes.” He remembers the awe in his mother’s voice as she recounted the story for him years after the event. “Mother said it sparkled at the fringe of the moon’s shadow like the shoreline of Sanctuary Cove.”

He wonders if the Alderaanians thought of the eclipse, of the sun’s power peeking through the umbra as a tractor beam lit up their little planet and shattered it into oblivion. He wonders if he’d shine, a million broken pieces flung to the winds, if Rey ever left his side.

“How powerful, the moon. So small and yet…”

“Capable of eclipsing the sun.”

“Yes,” he says and lays awake until her mind stops calling for his and the unwavering rhythm of her breathing lulls him to sleep.

* * *

 In the morning, he misses her warmth before he realizes he’s alone. Without her next to him, the bed has gone cold. Forcing his eyes open, he notices the sheets carefully drawn up on the right and underneath, a Rey-sized crater imprinted next to his body. His whole body throbs at the sight, hungry for more.

After dressing with near-frantic speed, he marches to the flight school, his distaste for Commander Bastra tempered by the notion of seeing Rey again. He’ll join the students in their morning exercises, beat Rey in a race, and then he’ll whisk her away so that they can recapture their heat from last night.

As he approaches the flight school, Bastra waves him over. “My lord!” he greets him, a self-satisfied smile creasing his ruddy visage. Kylo turns from the commander, scanning the row of students.

She’s not there—he senses the hole she leaves in the group before he’s finished searching the school for a slight girl with three buns. A choking desperation claws at his throat, though he swallows and demands, “Where’s Rey?”

“Didn’t she tell you?” Bastra asks, eyebrows shooting to the edge of his receding hairline. When Kylo’s stare darkens, he hurries to offer more details: “Her transfer was a matter of time, conditional on your mission. Thanks to yesterday’s performance, she graduated from flight school and received a relocation notice.”

“What?!” Rage curls around Kylo’s collar, an old friend he knows by name.

Bastra continues, impervious to his superior’s mounting desperation. “There’s nothing I could teach her that she doesn’t already know. The Imperial Navy desperately needs competent pilots like her. Why waste her time here when she could be of service to the First Order elsewhere?”

“Where is she?” Kylo growls.

“She didn’t tell you, my lord?” Bastra asks innocently, the picture of deference. Beneath his question rests a pointed satisfaction as the Knight of Ren wriggles visibly. His satisfaction disappears as Kylo’s fist connects with his jaw. The Knight of Ren darts like a fighter under Rey’s hands, zero to lightspeed in a matter of a breath. Then Bastra’s pinned to the nearest TIE fighter, struggling for air.

“Clearly she didn’t find the information necessary to share,” snarls Kylo. “I won’t ask again.”

The commander whimpers from the damage to his face or perhaps to his pride as his students look on. “Transferred to the  _Conqueror_ ,” he wheezes.

The destroyer’s name is meaningless to Kylo; Rey has already left. He takes a twisted comfort in the thin line of blood trickling from Bastra’s mouth, the lone thing keeping him from lashing out again. Instead he drops the commander, relishing the way his body crunches as it meets the launch bay floor, and leaves the flight school behind as fast as his boots can carry him, black cloak snapping angrily in his wake.

* * *

 Her imprint in his mattress, her scent on his sheets—they tease Kylo as he slumps amid the wreckage that once was his room. His robes lay torn on the ground, his desk rests dented against the wall, but even in the throes of betrayal he can’t bring himself to muss the last tangible reminders of the pilot who’s flown away, jettisoning him in her wake.

As his white hot anger cools to something pulsing and red, he reaches—for her, for their connection, for anything at all. In the minutes that follow, it’s too quiet and Kylo detects frustration bubbling from the ashes. Right as he’s ready to close his mind off, for good this time, he senses it—her. Echoes of the nobody from Jakku who infiltrated his mental defenses and demanded that he see her for who she is.

Their connection steadies; she coalesces before him, jerking up from some unseen task when she hears him gasping, sees his chest heaving. “Ben,” she says, a burning knife pressed into his back.

“Don’t say that name.”

Rey deflates as he snaps; nevertheless, she holds her ground when he stalks over to her figure, forcing his face into hers. He stares and she stares back, and in her armored eyes he hardly catches the barest glint of the fire that roared in them last night.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I had to go. Bastra promoted me—”

It’s falling into place, faster than she can talk, so he interrupts: “—Offered you a new post, a new ship, maybe a small TIE squadron to command. Why did you take it?”

In the parameters he lays out, Rey’s decision to leave makes sense. It holds his anger at bay while simultaneously feeding his fear. She doesn’t answer. He probes anyway; he must know.

“Why did you leave?”

“I had no choice,” she finally whispers. “I couldn’t stay with—here.”

She doesn’t name Kylo, but she might as well have slit his belly, pulled out his entrails and thrown him in a pit with a rancor for all the hurt she saves him. “How could you leave this behind?” Even as he gestures, he knows she cannot see what he does; they’re lightyears apart and his intellect is tearing at the seams as it tugs on hers, trying to make her see. “Together we’d be unstoppable. Join me and we could rule the galaxy.”

She swallows back a wash of frustration, or perhaps temptation, trembling slightly at the effort. No words leap from her throat to fill the void she’s created between them.

Not ready to back down, Kylo finds himself scrambling to recapture that luminescent grin of hers so freely given mere hours previously. “Join me and we could leave this behind. Commandeer a ship, fly through the stars. Find an ocean of our own.”

Except for a ragged “please” that slips from his lips, the room is quiet. Rey extends her hands, flinching as he pulls apart at her touch. Her eyes well. Still she stands resolute. “Your place is with the Emperor. I’m just…” She won’t say it, yet the truth sparks between them, an unwelcome guest. “I’m just a pilot.”  _A nobody,_ the taut fibers of her consciousness sing.

 _No,_ Kylo wants to shout,  _the best kriffing pilot in the galaxy. My pilot._ But he stands motionless, jaw pinned shut by the callousness of it all.

“We occupy different orbits, you and I,” she says, and her casual shrug belies the tightness of her shoulders. “We have no place together in this story.”

Hollowed out in one scoop, Kylo Ren longs for a mask to hide from her searing gaze and flaming truth. A connection like theirs amounts to more than a brief interlude under the cover of dark. It must, or…

He reaches for her; infinitesimally, she shudders. In that hesitation, he realizes she is lost.

“This is simply a race to you. You still want to beat me,” he says, and though a frown tugs at her lips he imagines it has to be true. Crimson cruelty glows hot in his stomach, cutting through the last of his restraint. The urge to cut her, make her feel, snuffs out the warmth dwindling in his heart. “You think you’re powerful. You—an abandoned child, junk trader scum. You’re nobody without me. A third-rate pilot whose parents sold her for drinking money.”

Like lightsabers slicing through flesh, his words bombard Rey and her face crumples under their weight.

“Get out of my head!” she yells, shaking from the force as her intellect pushes against his, forcing him out even as he clings to her, and then it’s just Kylo alone in his room, trembling in the wake of her power.

* * *

 He sees her once more, as they pass each other in the halls of the  _Supremacy_ right outside Supreme Leader Snoke’s audience chamber.

Her charcoal uniform is pressed. Two black stripes edged in silver glitter on her sleeve. A squadron of pilots trails in her wake. So she’s a general, Kylo notes, unsurprised. From her he’d expect nothing less.

Still it stings, the way her gaze meet his and then slides away. Outwardly she doesn’t falter, the click of her boots measured on the polished gunmetal floors as she walks towards him. Grateful for his mask, Kylo knows Rey didn’t see the twist of his lips, the gulp of his throat. But their minds can’t hide, not in a space so small, and he understands she feels him flailing to stay afloat. He feels her reaching, too, their half-baked thoughts colliding in small supernovas that threaten to capsize the whole ship.

When they pass, their shoulders nearly brush.

As Kylo Ren turns for a final glimpse—weakness, sheer weakness—all he sees is the line of three buns bobbing below her officer’s cap. At the end of the hall, he turns left, boards his destroyer, and flies until a distant ocean swallows him whole.

* * *

  _Even though they reach for each other—even though they align momentarily— the sun and the moon never touch, never kiss. They fall back into well-worn orbits and slip barely out of range. As the eclipse passes, the sun shrugs off the shadows, restoring light to the land. Left to watch the fire trailing in the sun’s wake, the hungry moon will forever chase after her light._

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to the amazing firelord65 who generated a prompt for the RFFA Valentine's Exchange that sparked this piece. :)


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